


Din'Anshiral

by silksieve



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 13:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4961608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silksieve/pseuds/silksieve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is only death on this journey.</p><p> </p><p>Very much Post-Trespasser.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Din'Anshiral

“The reports you requested, ser.”

Solas took the briefing pages and nodded at the messenger. “My thanks. And Solas will do. Or Fen’Harel, if you must.” 

“Fen’Harel. Ser.” The messenger saluted respectfully before backing out of the room. 

She leaned over his chair to plant a kiss on his head and rifled her fingers through the stack of papers. “You work too hard, emma lath.” 

“No more than is my duty,” he replied, careful to avoid her eyes.

“Negotiations? Again?”

It had been a long day and a longer peace-talk. He was tired, in more ways than one, and it was this moment of weakness that made him take the hand she laid on his shoulder. He brushed his lips across her knuckles before gently setting her hand down again.

“It is late, vhenan, and I still have much work to do. You should not be here,” he said.

“Suit yourself,” she replied. “You know where I am.” He did not turn his head to watch her go.

“She is careful, carefree, kind, curious,” Compassion said from beside his chair. “She is so beautiful.” 

Compassion tilted his head. “You want to think of me as Compassion. To make distances, to not remember as much or more.”

Solas sighed. It was very late. “We have spoken of this before. This is not a hurt that you can heal.”

Compassion remembered the shadowed world, the one that should never existed. Compassion could not help his nature, but his presence hurt, which only made him more determined to remain with Solas, and that in turn made the hurt worse, until it felt like his pain was eating itself. 

“I like Cole. She liked Cole, too,”

“Cole. Please.” 

He could not stop seeing her. She passed by his solar daily, read his books, observed his meetings, lingered in his halls, although he knew that these visions were no longer true sight. She and the rest of her world had burned when he ripped the Veil down, consumed by the rightful alignment of magic, purpose, and will, unstoppable in their terrible force.

The evanuris, freed and terrible in their re-awakened glory, were determined to reclaim what was theirs. The Dread Wolf’s forces held them at bay until Dirthamen stepped to sue for peace. Their negotiations dragged still, as Solas refused to settle into painful coexistence. There remained some hope still of ensuring the past did not repeat itself. 

But he was tired, and with the Veil gone, his waking and sleeping hours bled together, his dreams and memory blurring at the edges, making her manifest here when his will grew weak. He could have kept her even so, but that shadow was not free, and he did not want a simulacrum crafted by his own mind and the sympathy of spirits, when in truth she was nothing more than ash, long dissolved into the primordial magic of this realm. 

He sat back in his chair, resigned to the day and the steps he must take next.

“You can’t forget her because she was real,” Compassion whispered.

He dropped his head into his hand and laughed, and laughed harder until he clutched his sides from the pain of it. The sound grew louder, echoing off the silver towers of Arlathan reborn.


End file.
